In previous posts, we covered why Type Fast takes a personalized approach and how the adaptive algorithm works. Now we will focus on your journey through the system, from tracking your progress to principles that will help you improve faster.
Comprehensive Progress Tracking
Type Fast tracks multiple metrics for every key you practice. These include your smoothed timing, which is your average speed with outliers filtered out, your confidence score, your accuracy as a percentage of correct keypresses, your total number of attempts, and your best confidence ever achieved so you know what you are capable of at your peak.
At the session level, we also record your overall words per minute, your accuracy across all keys, the duration of your practice, and which keys were included in that session.
All of this data persists in your browser’s local storage. Your progress is never lost between sessions, even if you close the browser or shut down your computer. The only ways to lose your data are to clear your browser storage manually or to use the reset button within Type Fast.
Milestone Levels
As you master more keys, you advance through skill levels that give you clear goals to work toward.
You begin as a Novice while learning the home row with fewer than eight keys mastered. Once you master eight or more keys, you advance to Beginner. At fifteen or more keys mastered, you reach Intermediate. Twenty or more keys mastered makes you Advanced. And when you have mastered all twenty-six letters, you achieve Expert status.
These milestones provide a sense of progression and accomplishment as you work through the full keyboard. They also help you understand roughly where you are in your learning journey and how much further you have to go.
The Sixty-Second Typing Test
Sometimes you want a quick assessment of your current overall speed rather than focused practice on specific keys. The typing test mode provides exactly this by running for sixty seconds using text that includes the full alphabet.
Your results include your words per minute, your accuracy percentage, a skill level assessment, and personalized recommendations based on your performance. This test helps you set realistic target speeds for your adaptive practice and gives you a benchmark to track your improvement over time.
Principles for Effective Practice
Through building Type Fast and studying how people learn to type, we have developed some principles that we believe lead to the best results.
Focus on accuracy before speed. Speed comes naturally once your fingers know where to go, but rushing leads to errors, and errors reinforce wrong muscle memory. It is much harder to unlearn a bad habit than to build a good one from the start.
Keep your eyes on the screen rather than the keyboard. Looking at the keyboard breaks the feedback loop that builds touch typing skill. You need to trust your fingers and let them learn from their mistakes. If you watch the keyboard, your fingers never develop their own sense of key locations.
Practice regularly rather than in long sporadic sessions. Fifteen minutes of daily practice builds muscle memory far more effectively than two hours once a week. Your brain needs time between sessions to consolidate what it has learned.
Use proper finger placement by keeping your fingers on the home row when not reaching for other keys. Each finger is responsible for specific keys, and maintaining this discipline prevents the development of inefficient habits.
Do not get discouraged by slow progress. Building unconscious skill takes time, often more time than people expect. Trust the process and know that every practice session is making your fingers a little more capable, even when improvement feels invisible.
The Learning Science Behind Our Approach
Type Fast’s methodology draws from established research on how humans learn motor skills.
The concept of spaced repetition appears in how we cycle through keys based on performance. Weaker keys get reviewed more frequently than stronger ones, which research shows is far more effective than giving equal time to everything.
Deliberate practice is reflected in the focus key system. Research consistently shows that focusing on specific weaknesses produces faster improvement than generic repetition that does not target problem areas.
Progressive overload appears in how we gradually add new keys. By increasing complexity only when you are ready, we prevent the overwhelm that comes from trying to learn too much at once while ensuring that you are always appropriately challenged.
Immediate feedback is built into every keystroke. You see instantly whether you typed correctly, which helps you catch and correct mistakes before they become ingrained habits.
Getting Started
Head to the Type Fast home page and start typing. The system will assess your performance from your very first keystroke and begin building personalized lessons immediately.
There is no signup process and no configuration required. Just start typing and let the algorithm learn what you need.
We built Type Fast because we believe everyone deserves access to effective typing instruction. The skills you build here will serve you for the rest of your life, in every email, every document, every message you ever type. We hope you find the practice as rewarding as we have found building it.
Your fingers will thank you.